You know, when it stops raining in the entire country, suddenly the skies turn grey in Chennai and it pours like there’s no tomorrow. It is called the retreating monsoons. And no matter how many years you have been in this city, that first torrential downpour leaves you pleasantly surprised. Makes you fall in love with the city. I call these months the magic months. The months when all prejudices about the city wash away. When instead of hot humid weather, there is a cool wind and a spring in your step. When every weekend is a vacation, where evenings are spent walking on the beach and eating fish at those small sea side stalls.

It is a Sunday rainy morning today. Am sitting in the balcony and figuring out how much of work is involved in getting my place spic and span. Ma and Baba are reaching tonight, which gives me all of 10 hours to do my bit. Holding on to my steaming cup of coffee, inertia is almost overwhelming. Because on a day like today, all you’d want to do is read your book in your favourite corner of the house while some magic elf keeps serving cups after cups of coffee along with some extremely unhealthy drool-worthy side dish!

Yesterday was spent in Saravana stores. If you don’t know yet, this is an absolutely huge supermarket that could give Walmart a run for its money. They say the only thing you can’t buy here are your relatives! 😛 Now, shopping here requires a fair amount of resilience and survival instincts. The crowd is maddening and while you nicely pick something you like, there might be two other people pulling at it. Our shopping list included mops, umbrella, study table, oven, floor mats,saris etc etc. By the end of the day, we had bought so much that one more packet, and one of us would have had to take a rickshaw back! So you get it right? We have bought all of these homely things in anticipation of the parents’ visit and now we need to put it all in place. Sigh!

Really looking forward to the next few days. There is Durga pujo and a lot of eating involved. That too with few of my favourite people in the whole wide world. Throw in a bit of Pondicherry too. And ma’s birthday! And then, there is this rain. Incessant, grey but happiness inducing. My place might not become cleaner by tonight. What I do know is it will be more home-like and warmer. Like I keep saying, a place’s worth is always measured by the people who are in it! 🙂